


The Trapdoor

by HandmaidenOfHorror



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24569509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/pseuds/HandmaidenOfHorror
Summary: A younger Asuka encounters a monster of a slightly different kind from the ones she deals with in canon.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	The Trapdoor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Big_bunbun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_bunbun/gifts).



Having been admitted to the Munich University at the age of nine, Asuka Langley firmly refused the proposal of living on the university’s campus, even if she could live there for free. As if! She knew that most students didn’t follow a decent study and sleep routine, spending their days having fun loudly until late at night and only studying before the exams, disturbing Asuka’s own ambitious study program. Obviously, she had to rent a room where it was _quiet_ , and thankfully quickly she found one that was just perfect.

An old lady was renting rooms in the house she lived in. The house was at least a century old, standing out among larger houses rebuilt after the war. It had a small front yard and a large orchard in the back yard. Most importantly, it was located literally a few steps away from a bus stop from which Asuka could take a bus directly to the university. She had to share the building with the landlady and another tenant, medicine student named Sara, but they kept to themselves, just like Asuka did. _Perfect_. No more teen idiots mocking her for her age!

Well, there was one strange thing. When the landlady introduced her to the room, she pointed to the part of the floor covered by a colorful carpet.

“Be careful when you are walking, especially at night,” Frau Meyer told Asuka, “There’s a locked trapdoor leading to the undercellar there. It used to be a bomb shelter, but water started leaking in when I was little and since then it’s been locked.”

The lady then looked Asuka in the eyes with a serious expression.

“Please don’t try to check what’s inside. It’s very deep and you might seriously hurt yourself if you fall.”

“Of course madam,” replied Asuka, trying to look as trustworthy as she could, but she supposed she just looked childish as the woman smiled.

“Good. Now let’s go to the kitchen,” and Asuka’s introduction to the house continued.

After she moved in, Asuka mostly forgot about the trapdoor. She asked her aunt and uncle to move the heavy wardrobe over it, covering it completely and minimalizing the possibility of accidents.

Months went by uneventful. Asuka woke up early, rode the bus to the university, studied or did homework if there was any free period, rode the bus back and studied some more until it was time to sleep. In the beginning, she used to walk around the neighborhood on Sundays, but there was not much to be seen and she didn’t have time to visit more attractive parts of Munich. Most students would have found her lifestyle dull, but Asuka wasn’t most students and was content with it.

And just like that, suddenly the year was over. Asuka was honestly surprised how fast it felt to pass. She passed all the exams and were to spent the holidays with her relatives in Berlin. She felt a tiny bit of guilt that she didn’t manage to get familiar with Munich beforehand. The landlady planned to have the whole house renovated in the summer, so on her last night Asuka was sleeping among suitcases and furniture moved away from the walls. That arrangement was upsetting, stirring memories she didn’t want to wake, making it more difficult to fall asleep than the pressure of the hardest exam. And in the silence late at night, Asuka heard the sound of dripping water.

At first, she thought it was starting to rain outside, but she quickly realize that the faint sound was coming from under the trapdoor. Asuka sat up, display of her electronic watch showing 3:44 AM. The lady said that she was planned to have the trapdoor walled up so that it was no longer a problem. If Asuka wanted to see what was inside, that was her last chance – and it wasn’t as if she could just sleep anyways.

Asuka turned on the lights in her room. She wasn’t some idiot in a rubbish horror movie, she wasn’t about to go down there, just open and take a look, and for that, she’d need a lot of light. She then knelt on the floor and put her ear to the trapdoor. Yes, it was definitely the source of the sound. It was as if water slowly dropped in a larger body of water, like a large puddle. The water at the bottom must be at least a few centimeters deep.

Asuka then examined the lock. It was decades old and completely rusty, and a slight pull was enough for it to break away, even though Asuka didn’t mean it. Feeling that there was not backing away now, Asuka opened the trapdoor. What she saw was a deep vertical tunnel with an iron ladder attached to the wall. She has never seen a bomb shelter, but she assumed such construction makes sense for one. The tunnel was deep, so deep that the light from the room didn’t reach its bottom. The sound of water was also much louder now. So much water is no good for the building’s construction, right?

And then the lid of the ladder caught her attention. A large sheet of yellowed paper was glued to it, covered with scribbles and schematics of what she assumed was the construction of the bomb shelter. She didn’t recognize the language of the scribbles if they even were in any language, before she had an eureka moment – Cyrillic cursive! Now all she had to do was to use the internet to decipher the script, and then-

And then she hear footsteps in the water.

Asuka froze. Was the bomb shelter actually connected with the outside? She quickly ran through her memories of the neighborhood and realized that it was impossible. And the splashing steps, they didn’t really seem human. They were stiff and heavy, as if it was something large that was not used to moving. This was certainly a situation from a horror movie.

In her place, most people would flee as far as they could. But Asuka wasn’t most people. Instead, she closed the trapdoor, moved the heavy wardrobe so that it was blocking the entrance, and then woke up the old lady and the other tenant, telling them that there’s somebody in the bomb shelter. The old lady initially thought it was a nightmare and tried to soothe Asuka as if she was her granddaughter, but Sara phoned the police just in case.

The police took its time, arriving half past four. For the whole time, Asuka was standing in her room, armed with a rolling pin in case the _thing_ tried to emerge. She was a defender of humanity, wasn’t she? The officers, a fat woman and a very young lanky man, seemed much less capable of defending anything. They didn’t have to – when they opened the trapdoor, the room’s bright light reached to the bottom of the much shorter tunnel, barely moist. Asuka knew they won’t find anything there – they were looking in the wrong place. But how did it change? Why?

In the end the landlady was not angry at Asuka for the nightly commotion, attributing it to stress of academic life. It was already dawning, so she decided to get up properly early rather than return to sleep. As she disappeared in her room, Sara poked Asuka in the arm and whispered into her ear as she turned.

“Strange things happen during the witch hour. Don’t take the lure and they’ll go away,” and then, louder, “I’ll graduate in September, you can take my room next year, there are no trapdoors here.”

Asuka nodded, some more understanding of the world starting to form in her mind. At least she had over three months to ponder the situation before making a decision.


End file.
